The minke whale was discovered on Friday by a patrol boat under Battersea Bridge
An eight-foot whale washed up on the shore of the Thames yesterday, where it was found by a patrol boat under Battersea Bridge.
The minke whale was found on Friday evening at about 10pm by a Port of London Authority boat, but it is not yet known how it got there or why it died.
Continue reading...With global heating damaging corals worldwide, experts find potential tool in ‘acoustic enrichment’ to recolonise reefs
Playing sounds of a healthy coral reef can attract fish back to reefs that have become degraded and abandoned, researchers have found.
Global heating together with factors such as pollution are causing widespread damage to coral and harming delicate reef ecosystems.
Continue reading...Plan aims to allow tuna population to recover from overfishing, but conservationists say endangered mako shark has been overlooked
Conservationists welcomed “long overdue” catch limits set this week for bigeye tuna and other Atlantic species, but criticised weak measures to rebuild endangered mako shark populations.
The International Commission for the Conservations of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) – responsible for the management of tuna and tuna-like species and bycatch including sharks and rays – set new catch limits for bigeye tuna at a meeting in Palma, Mallorca, this week. It also agreed to reduce juvenile fish mortality by limiting certain fishing practices.
Continue reading...Shooting poachers, circling polar bears, flailing four-tonne seals, singing rhinos and the world’s worst sea … the team behind Attenborough’s latest extravaganza relive their thrills and spills
Chadden Hunter, producer, North America and South America
Continue reading...Last of the species in country, a female rhino named Iman, ‘died sooner than expected’
The Sumatran rhinoceros has become extinct in Malaysia, zoologists have announced.
The last of the species in the country succumbed to cancer in the state of Sabah on the island of Borneo, it was revealed.
Continue reading...Exclusive: scientists say bug deaths can be cut by switching off unnecessary lights
Light pollution is a significant but overlooked driver of the rapid decline of insect populations, according to the most comprehensive review of the scientific evidence to date.
Artificial light at night can affect every aspect of insects’ lives, the researchers said, from luring moths to their deaths around bulbs, to spotlighting insect prey for rats and toads, to obscuring the mating signals of fireflies.
Continue reading...Hunters and government biologists searching for explanations after unusual sounds recorded in forests of north-western Ontario
A series of howls and shrieks recorded in the Canadian wilderness have left a hunter and government biologists searching for explanations.
Gino Meekis was out hunting grouse with his wife and grandson in the forests of north-western Ontario – more than 50km from the closest town – when they heard a series of eerie noises in the distance.
Continue reading...Cows missing for two months were located on North Carolina’s Outer Banks after ‘mini tsunami’ carried wildlife away
Three cows swept off an island during the raging storm of Hurricane Dorian have been located on North Carolina’s Outer Banks after apparently swimming four miles during the storm.
Related: ‘Insect apocalypse’ poses risk to all life on Earth, conservationists warn
Continue reading...Parks agency plans to move hundreds of animals in ‘biggest translocation of wildlife in Zimbabwe’s history’
Hundreds of elephants and tens of lions in Zimbabwe will be moved by the country’s wildlife agency as part of a major operation to save the animals from a devastating drought.
More than 200 elephants have died over the last two months due to a lack of water at the country’s main conservation zones in Mana Pools and Hwange National Park.
Continue reading...A distinctly two-tone mouse deer that was feared lost to science has been captured on film foraging for food by camera traps set up in a Vietnamese forest.
The pictures of the rabbit-sized animal, also known as the silver-backed chevrotain, are the first to be taken in the wild and come nearly 30 years after the last confirmed sighting of the creature
Continue reading...Silver-backed chevrotain caught on camera after it was feared lost to science
A distinctly two-tone mouse deer that was feared lost to science has been captured on film foraging for food by camera traps set up in a Vietnamese forest.
The pictures of the rabbit-sized animal, also known as the silver-backed chevrotain, are the first to be taken in the wild and come nearly 30 years after the last confirmed sighting.
Continue reading...Operator faces choice of weakening 14km barrier or potentially devastating a biodiversity hotspot
The biggest hydroelectric project in the Amazon rainforest has a design flaw that poses a “very serious” threat to human life and globally important ecosystems, according to documents and expert testimony received by the Guardian.
The studies suggest engineers failed to anticipate the impact of water shortages on the Pimental dam at Belo Monte, which has been closed and turned into a barrier. This is forcing the operators to choose between a structural weakening of the 14km-wide compacted-earth barrier and a reallocation of water in the reservoir or on the Xingu river, which is home to indigenous communities, fishing villages and some of the world’s most endangered species.
Continue reading...Pollution stretches across 2,400km of coastline, with scientists fearing contamination of food chain
Hundreds of kilometres of mangroves and coral reefs, as well as humpback whale breeding grounds, are under threat from an oil spill that has polluted more than 2,400km of Brazil’s north-eastern coast in the last two months.
The Brazilian Navy, which has deployed 8,500 personnel, 30 ships and 17 aircraft in the cleanup operation, said this week that 4,200 tonnes of oil have been removed from beaches, amid fears by scientists that some has already entered the food chain.
Continue reading...Ultra-endurance athlete, aerodynamic wonder … and facing extinction. Why the bird who flies 30,000km a year needs Australia’s mudflats
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The ascent is vertical. Up, up and into the jet stream. If the conditions are not right up there it will come back down and wait. But if there is a good tailwind in the right direction it will begin an epic journey that will take it around the curvature of the Earth; from the Arctic Circle to the southern hemisphere.
Using the sun and stars as a compass, and navigating by the Earth’s magnetic field, recognising landmarks, the far eastern curlew will fly nonstop to the Yellow Sea, where it fuels up on the mudflats of north-east China.
Continue reading...Blaze around Lake Innes and Lake Cathie in northern NSW has destroyed more than 2,000 hectares and spread smoke haze to Sydney
Hundreds of koalas are feared to have died in an out-of-control bushfire in northern New South Wales which has raged unchecked for days in the heartland of their prime habitat.
The blaze, reportedly caused by a lightning strike near Port Macquarie, has burned more than 2,000 hectares, including an important koala breeding ground.
Continue reading...A group of women in Noumea who swim and snorkel up to 3km five days a week have uncovered a large population of venomous sea snakes in the Baie des Citrons where scientists once believed they were rare. The citizen scientists, aged in their 60s and 70s, call themselves 'the fantastic grandmothers’. They swim with the 1.5-long lethal greater sea snakes, documenting the local population with cameras to take note of their breeding habits and share them with experts
Continue reading...Discovery of whale’s body near Gravesend follows death of young humpback this month
A second whale has been found dead in the Thames less than two weeks after a humpback nicknamed Hessy died near the same stretch of water.
The Port of London Authority confirmed the suspected fin whale was discovered in the river at Denton, near Gravesend, on Friday morning.
Continue reading...The unusual organism has no mouth but can detect and digest food, and no brain yet can learn
A Paris zoo has showcased a slime mold, dubbed the “blob”, a yellowish, unicellular, small living being which looks like a fungus but acts like an animal.
This newest exhibit of the Paris Zoological Park, which goes on display to the public on Saturday and is widely used in scientific experiments, has no mouth, no stomach, no eyes, yet it can detect food and digest it.
Continue reading...New video footage reveals the world's fastest ants galloping across the scorching sand of the Sahara at speeds approaching one metre per second, which is the equivalent of a house cat tearing about at 120mph.
Researchers have found that at full pelt the Saharan silver ants can travel 108 times their body length per second in gallops that brought all six legs off the ground at once
Continue reading...Wildfires and an encroaching population are threatening grasslands that host some of the world’s rarest species
Conservationist Getachew Assefa points across the valley. “It started close to the mist over there, by the most spectacular viewpoint,” he says. “Almost all the grassland was burnt. All of that plateau and the steep cliff over there.”
Six months after wildfires torched this part of Ethiopia’s Simien Mountains, the scars are healing: heather and grass have returned to carpet the hilltop, brightened by the yellow daisies which bloom after the long rains. On the near side of the valley lie barley fields, rippling in the wind.
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